Of Pumpkins and Cold Nights
by NorthernTrash-x
Summary: For Editor-chan. Various pairings. Because everyone loves Halloween, including Toradora.


For my favourite Editor-chan, in celebration of me coming home. :)

I was inspired to write something about Halloween by Tim Currey's song, 'Anything Can Happen on Halloween', from an old made-for-TV film. You all need to go and watch it.

Has anyone seen my tambourine?

Ryuuji/Taiga, Minori/Kitamura, Minori/Ami, various other people and pairings.

**Of Pumpkins and Cold Nights**

_Say it once, say it twice,_  
_Take a chance and roll the dice_  
_Ride with the moon_  
_In the dead of night_  
The Nightmare Before Christmas

**Moon**

Ryuuji couldn't help but be a little uncomfortable: it was freezing cold, and he was sat on the ground, with a heavy weight in his lap.  
However, he didn't think that he really should be complaining: after all, that weight was his girlfriend, and Taiga had slipped his hands underneath her coat and jumper to keep them warm on her stomach. She was looking up at the moon: apparently, the view of the crescent moon was just not good enough from the window of the house.  
There were kids out in their dozens, running to-and-fro with their trick-or-treat bags and gleeful laughter. Taiga watched them pass with a little jealously: even though she could have got away with it, with her height and stature, Ryuuji had banned her from joining in, much to her annoyance. They had squabbled for a little time, but he had been firm. He was entirely against Halloween at their age, he said: it was only good for children, and there was nothing worthwhile about it for them.  
So this was his punishment: sat out here in the cold, but wrapped up in warm coat with a beautiful girl sitting on his lap, leaning against him, breath ghosting in the air and the shampoo-and-warmth smell of her hair surrounding him.  
He smiled as he thought about it, and supposed that Halloween wasn't so bad.

**Pumpkin**

Pumpkin carving was exceptionally messy. The orange goo tended to get everywhere, and the seeds slipped between your fingers when you were hollowing the vegetable out, falling to the floor for incautious feet to slip on.  
Minori loved it.  
Pumpkins, as far as she was concerned, were awesome- having them there, glowing on front porches and bright in darkened windows, just looked so cool to her.  
Kitamura liked it too: it was a good excuse to take his shirt off, because after all, only a domestic goddess like Ryuuji could get pumpkin stains out of a shirt.  
And, a domestic goddess Minori was not.  
"How are you carving your pumpkin, Minori?"  
She didn't answer, tongue stuck out of the corner of his mouth and carving knife flailing wildly in the air as she hacked at the great, orange mess. Kitamura was quite pleased of his own, it being perfectly sculpted and quite life-like, but he had to admit that there was a quaint charm to her depiction of a zombie-werewolf.  
"What is yours meant to be?"  
Kitamura grinned as she flicked a pumpkin seed at him, and wondered if he should tell her that his own pumpkin was carved to look like her. He didn't think that was too strange.  
It wasn't his fault that he always thought of her as shining.

**Sweets**

When Ami had found the bag of Halloween sweets on her desk that Monday morning, she had put it down to an admirer, and had passed them around the class. But the next day, more arrived: chocolate eyeballs, this time.  
Wednesday brought jelly-bugs, Thursday came with a little bit more concern and a bag of biscuit bats.  
She screamed on Friday, when her stalker left her a heart.  
Not a pretty, paper cut out, but an animal heart, blood soaking through the butchers wrappings.  
Her terror abated somewhat when she ran out of the classroom, and saw Minori and Taiga in hysterics in the corridor.

**Costumes**

"Ami, I don't want to wear this!"  
The model ignored Minori, adjusting her own latex-and-leather costume, making sure that the cut-out panels were placed to show herself off to the best potential. Minori stumbled out of the bedroom, tugging at the short hem of the Halloween costume that Ami had picked out for her.  
"And I have a costume anyway."  
"Your baseball uniform is not a costume. And neither is that ghastly bald wig that you insisted on keeping."  
Minori rolled her eyes, but she was smiling. Ami carefully angled her hat, and flicked her wand at the mirror, smirking.  
"What about the alien costume?"  
Ami said nothing, but it was very clear from her body language that she was not impressed by this suggestion. Minori could not help but be impressed that Ami could actually breathe in the ridiculously tight witch costume that she had on: at least hers had a little give. And it wasn't that her costume was too terrible- it was just, being a cat was such a _boring_ idea.  
"Can I at least be a man-eating cat?"  
Ami turned back from the mirror, and looked Minori up and down. The incredibly short black skirt was worn over black tights and furred boots: she had cute paw-gloves and ears, and a low-cut black vest. A tail curled behind her, and she had whiskers drawn on her face. All in all, a full-on kitten, and Ami really, _really_ wanted a black cat to match her witch costume.  
She sighed. Minori really looked so delectable like that. Giving in to the inevitable, she reached into a draw, and handed her the bottle of fake blood.  
An hour later, when she watched a Zombie-Taiga (dragging behind her an uncomfortable, Frankenstein-Ryuuji) embrace the blood-soaked and crazed looking Minori-panther, she had to admit that this way suited her much more. She cuddled the plush cat toy, and bit her lip.  
Besides, the rather enthusiastic kiss she had received after giving her the blood more than made up for the loss of the cute-kitten-Minori.

**Black Cat**

Yasuko bent down to pet the black cat that crossed her path that morning, not caring that it was probably bad luck to do so. She figured that she had had all the bad luck that the world could throw at her, and frankly, she wasn't too bothered about any more. What was going to happen next- her liver fail, or something?  
Although, given the amount of alcohol she tended to consume on a nightly basis at work, perhaps this wasn't too ridiculous a concern.  
The cat purred, and rubbed its head against her hand.  
Ryuuji- still little, still small enough to want to hold her hand when they walked down the street, tugged on her sleeve.  
"Come on, we need to get the frozen food back before it melts!"  
She smiled, and wondered why, if bad luck meant teenage pregnancy and making a few mistakes, she couldn't help but feel so _happy_.

**Ghost**

"Ryuuji?"  
He did not look at her, only stared with consternation at the pile of dirty dishes that had somehow accumulated in Taiga's apartment. God knows why they were there, since she ate all of her meals at his house anyway. Some of them were crusted with things that he didn't even know the _name _of.  
"What?"  
"Do you like Christmas?"  
He cast his mind briefly back to the messy affair of last year's Christmas, complete with rejections, singing and Father-Christmas-Bear costumes. He had to resist the urge to shudder at the thought.  
"I suppose it has its moments. Why?"  
"Well, you remember Easter?"  
Ryuuji's eyes widened a little in horror as he recalled that particular costume that he had been forced into- and damn it, he didn't even celebrate Easter! Now he couldn't even _look_ at a rabbit in the same way.  
He refused to remember Valentine's Day. There was only so much he could cope with.  
Disturbed, he slowly turned around, only to see Taiga standing there, clutching onto something that looked distinctly like a deflated Casper the Friendly Ghost.  
"Oh, hell no!"

**Monsters**

"Kitamura, do you believe in monsters?"  
He shook his head, a part of him wishing that he could say yes, just to see if that would keep her interested. Minori had a habit of wandering off, thinking about things that were far removed from what he really wanted to talk about. She nodded, as if expecting that sort of answer, but instead of wandering off as he thought she might she threw herself down on the bench next to him and sighed to herself.  
"I don't think I do, either."  
He turned to face her, and saw that she was smiling in the pale gold sunlight of the cold October morning. From across the park, he could see children playing: a little boy in a Frankenstein mask chasing a half-screaming, half-laughing girl.  
"Why?"  
She closed her eyes, and shrugged.  
"It isn't something that I want to believe in."  
Their hands touched, and Kitamura bit the corner of his lip, wondering why she had called him this morning and why he was always so glad to see her. She tucked her hair behind her ear, and he resisted the urge to kiss her nose.  
"But maybe I believe in good monsters."  
"Oh?"  
She nodded.  
"The ones who do the right thing, even though inside they don't want to. The ones who try and make their friends happy, even though inside they feel evil, because they resent what they are doing."  
Kitamura looked at the flowerbeds, a strange smile on his face.  
"Like, trying to get two friends together, even though you like one of them?"  
Minori nodded, and touched her fingertips to the top of his wrist. Impulsive, reckless, he grabbed hold of her hand.  
She turned to look at him, and smiled.

**Night**

"Kitamura, what are we doing here?"  
"We're using the cover of darkness, of course."  
"Okay… but Kitamura, why do we need the cover of darkness?"  
Minori sounded confused, which didn't make a lot of sense, Haruta had to admit, seeing as how he thought this whole idea was hers in the beginning. Behind him, Ami tutted in annoyance at the delay in Kitamura's answer to Minori's question.  
"Because, if everything is bright, then Ryuuji will see us!"  
Haruta didn't understand why they needed to try and scare Ryuuji anyway- it wasn't like it would be that entertaining, he was sure. After a moment of too-loud whispers, a muffled voice came from through the door.  
"I can hear you out there!"  
Ami rolled her eyes, still not sure how she had been roped into this whole thing. As soon as Minori got and idea in her head, it didn't matter how ludicrous, the whirlwind of a girl just seemed to sweep everyone up with it. Everyone else, seeming to ignore the voice and the irritated glares from passing neighbours, continued to argue until a light flicked on in the hallway.  
"Quiet, everyone!"  
The four stood silent, and Haruta felt like crying inside.  
With an squeaking of hinges, the door opened, and Minori and Kitamura let out a great yell (Ami was stood examining her nails, and Haruta was still trying to remember why he was there).  
Taiga stood blinking at them in the doorway.  
Slowly, from behind her back, she pulled out a long iron bar.  
Kitamura blinked, owlishly.  
"Ahh… Happy Halloween?"

**Trick**

It had all been Haruta's idea.  
They established that this was a good thing to know, as it gave them someone to blame. If only Haruta hadn't come up with the idea for the trick, then perhaps none of this would have happened. One teacher would have gone on spending his lunch hours pumping steel in the gym, the other would have gone on sobbing into her coffee and real-estate books.  
But no. Haruta had to change that, to the detriment of their sanity.  
He just _had _to think that it would be really amusing to try and set the two of them up together as a joke, seeing as how they were all sick and tired of hearing their getting-on-a-little-bit homeroom teacher's various rants on the evil of men and fate and all sorts of other things in constantly-changing mood swings. Not to mention the fact that it would finally settle the pool on their gym-teacher's ambiguous sexuality.  
What they hadn't expected, was that she would actually _like_ his permatanned, over worked muscles: even less, they hadn't anticipated that he might actually notice that she was (or used to be) quite pretty- and as well, was actually a nice person.  
So, it was firmly decided, they all had to blame Haruta for the horror of walking into their classroom to see their teachers doing things that… that they really did not need to see.  
Ever.  
And if Haruta ever thought that this blame was perhaps unfair, he never said anything on the matter.  
Though, people speculated, that might more have been because Taiga had tied him up and gagged him, thus preventing any such protestations.

**Treat**

"Ryuuji!"  
"What?"  
"When do I get my treat?"  
"Why do you need a treat?"  
Taiga indicated her empty plate with a proud hand.  
"Because I finished all my vegetables, of course."  
She pouted, and stuck a foot out, attempting to trip him up as he walked past with the empty plates from the table. He carefully side-stepped, being well used to her antics.  
"The meat on your plate was a treat. I did it in advance."  
"That's crap, Ryuuji. Are we having desert?"  
He shook his head, not bothering to turn around from the sink.  
"I want a treat!"  
She folded her arms across her chest, ready to sulk, but before she could start complaining she felt a hand on her head, ruffling her hair, drawing a blush through her cheeks as Ryuuji leant down, rubbing his nose against her own and kissing her quickly, lightly, enough to make her want more.  
He pulled back, and kissed her forehead, before going back to the sink.  
Taiga was silent for a moment, and Ryuuji smiled to himself as he turned on the tap.


End file.
